As the owner of an online design agency for clinicians – dietitians specifically included – I’ve learned a lot about choosing a niche that is profitable. Sometimes, many marketing experts will sway against niching down because of it’s limitations, but I disagree. The key to a businesses’ success is finding a specific subset of individuals who you can speak directly to – and once you do that, it can be extremely profitable. In this post, we’ll be discussing the different ways you can pick a profitable online nutrition niche.
You can think of your niche as your speciality. We’ve worked with diabetes dietitians, women’s health, gut-focused, sports nutrition, pediatrics and breastfeeding. Each of these can be considered a “niche” of expertise.
The key to finding a niche isn’t selecting an area that you “enjoy” working with – although that’s a large part of it. We talk more about that in this post. Instead, finding one that’s marketable – aka profitable – is even more crucial. How do you do that?
- Analyze competition
- Prioritize your preferences
- Leverage your skillsets
Online nutrition courses for niching
At the beginning of this year, our copywriter & SEO specialist, Diana and myself launched Marketing Momentum Mastermind. We welcomed two dietitian members into our mastermind to help clarify their messaging, rehaul their niches and discuss advanced marketing strategies to boost their reach in practice.
During our mastermind, we met weekly to review advanced concepts such as paid advertisements, leveraging brand awareness, copywriting & organic SEO strategies and scaling. An entire week of our curriculum was just focused on niching.
That’s just how important picking a niche is!
We wanted our dietitian members to really dive into the research and data of their niche to see if it’s profitable. One of the members was focused on GLP-1s while the other was more broadened because she had a mulit-office practice.
Either way, your success comes from making strategic decisions upfront! Let’s talk about the “bulk” of how to select a niche that will be set up for success.
And – if you’ve found yourself curious about our mastermind, Cohort 2 will begin enrollment at the end of 2024.
1. Analyze your competition
The best way to make any business decision is to strategically research prior your entering of any market. There are multiple ways you can compile your research:
- Social media
- SEO tools
To analyze your competition, you want to first go into social media accounts (i.e. Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn) and type into search the type of niche you are searching to join. For us, that’s “brand designer for dietitians” as an example.
From there, you can gauge how many individuals would be in your direct market. Now, it’s important to note that these searches aren’t going to showcase the exact number in your market. Maybe some of your competitiors choose to not market on social media.
Although, this is a great way to review the current saturation and see if you find your practice fitting in well. Once you’ve searched, review their accounts and see the type of content they produce. Is this something you would enjoy creating?
Secondly, you can use SEO tools to compile research on your niche. Using our example for our studio above, we could type into SEMrush.com a few keywords our ideal client might be searching for, “i.e. best therapist websites”.
From there, review your competitors – how well does their websites do in terms of organic search? Are those keywords rankable?
Lastly, simply Google your ideal niche. If you are thinking about diving into sports nutrition, consider searching “sports nutritionist in [your location].” and see how many others might be in your area!
The data you want to grab here is summed up in the following:
- How many competitors you have
- How often your potential niche is searched
- Performance and analytics based on the above
2. Prioritize your preferences
While compiling your search from above, you also want to make sure you are prioritizing your preferences in the online nutrition space.
For example, I wouldn’t recommend choosing a niche (or specialty) strictly on it’s profitability.
Yes, in data-terms, this would be a good decision because a profitable niche = more money and more clients. However, in determining your overall business scope, is profitability all you are looking for?
I’d highly recommend considering your personal preferences such as:
- Working with children
- Treating heart conditions
- Dealing with eating disorders
- Not working with men
When you find an online nutrition niche that bridges the gap of profitability and preference, you will really enjoy the work you do. When you enjoy the work you do, you will love creating and working hard to scale.
This brings us into our next point of leveraging your skillsets. Maybe your personal preference is working with children and one of your skillsets is finding ways for them to make experimenting with food fun. By leveraging skillsets, you can truly find a very powerful home for your practice.
3. Leverage your skillsets in the online nutrition space
Finding your own unique of skillsets is crucial in entrepreneurship.
Essentially, it’s how you can easily communicate to your ideal client that you should be chosen over your competitors. Once you find your sweet spot of skills, it really becomes hard to replicate and thus, you are able to craft a completely unique experience when working with your clients.
For example, maybe you are extremely great at project management.
While not a skillset that is directly correlated to your online nutrition practice, it sets you apart because project management is a key part of running a company and thus, creates for a unique experience. Internal organization goes a long ways!
Or, consider one of your strong suits to be presenting to large audiences. If you leveraged your skillset to pick a profitable niche, you can set yourself apart by presenting multiple masterclasses to a subset of individuals. From someone who is not gifted in the public speaking department, this skillset is so valuable to have in any type of business!
Once you identify your main skillsets, you can truly find yourself in a profitable space online.
Conclusion
By analyzing your competition to see if entering in a space is profitable you are able to gather data insights on what can actually work for you! Because I have a degree in Information Technology, I had several classes on predictive analytics and data forecasting. If the data backs something, it’s very hard to find a reason to sway away from this decision!
When combined with your personal preferences and skillsets, you can be confident that you are entering a market where you can successfully market your services and make money. In the end, is making money your end goal or finding a balance between profit and enjoyment?
Consider these related posts when analyzing how to pick a profitable online nutrition niche:
